A document of London artworld events, happenings, launches and shows, with occasional magazines.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Russell Herron's Blog

Well, let's see. What are we drinking here? Ah yes...Finally. After a year of stumbling round the dirty London artworld this is where it ends. Right here, with me, on my own, hunched over the keyboard, sipping from a glass. I set out to try and make a record of what was happening over a year and, whilst knowingly inconclusive, subjective, incomplete and flawed, I've done it. Over the last 12 - 13 months I've been to over 170 private views, made 130 seperate entries on this blog, seen a great deal of art and met a whole host of artists and gallerists, dealers and writers, wannabes and willbes.I wanted to write something of what is is like to be in the artworld at this time. It is, although it may be sometimes difficult to see, a love letter. To London, to the London artworld and the people, all of them, who make it happen in so many surprising and brilliant ways. We were all in it together. We were all here, trying to get along.I wrote it because I wanted to tackle history without hindsght. I wanted to find out what it all looked like now and not have to wait for history to rearrange it all into something that made sense. I wanted to know who was doing what and where and what did it look like? I was looking for what was coming next, or what was just happening or what was still on the way. I wanted The New. And with this in mind, I mostly avoided the big galleries. I sniffed around the smaller independent spaces; the front rooms, the disused shops, clubs and squats.I undoubtedly missed some of the the key shows of the last year. And I undoubtedly stumbled drunk through shows which may one day be regarded as turning points, beginnings of movements, or seminal moments in artists careers. Well, so be it. I set myself an impossible task and I failed and I also succeeded. Anyway, this is it. Or more precisely, this was now.

Thanks to all the people who appeared in different ways in this blog. Thanks to all the people who read it. Thank you to the people who emailed me invitations to come and see what you were doing. And thank you to the people who took the time to leave comments on the blog (even the lovely person who left this one).

The following is a list of all the artists, gallerists, writers and curators, and other assorted people that have been mentioned in the blog - sometimes at length, sometimes merely as a name check/drop, sometimes as something in between - with links to, wherever possible and where I could find it, their own website/blog/myspace/info/gallery page, whatever. And sometimes, where I felt it was particularly relevant, back to an entrance in this blog. Usually a link back to this blog signifies an entry that has some interest more than just a namecheck. If you are interested to see where a name appears in the blog but there is no link to it in this list type russell herron + name into any search engine. It usually gets there.